In Threes
by Zero9grl
Summary: Third Angel of Death and professional Tetra Master player Mikoto lives life as if she's not in it and when another one of Terra's misbegotten children enters the stage, she finds he's not helping things.
1. Life Calling

Note: All characters, places, ect belong to Square Enix, not me.

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_In Threes_

By Zero9grl

_Chapter One: Life Calling_

_**When she was little the world was still and blue and dead. The people did not speak, only watched, and everything different was quickly crushed. The dead were why the population lived and it was all pervaded by the soft silence of the grave. Now that she is older, there is color and sound and the world is vibrant. But the world is not her world. That sunshine, that moonlight, those tides and stars, they are not the earthly forces she was born to. She's a guest in this world, a refugee brought to haven, an outsider taken in. One world dead, one world living, one girl straddling both and unable to partake in either.

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"Meow" I woke up to the feeling of claws in my chest and something furry attempting to lodge itself up my nose. "Meow," my cat called again, demanding my attention as I attempted to roll on to my side and go back to sleep. With a slight groan I flopped out of bed, clothes all rumpled, eyes half-shut and hair probably sticking up like a haystack. It was another morning on Gaia and I looked like something a Mu had dug up. Thank you Gaian mornings. By the way, when I died, my afterlife goal would be to re-kill the man who had invented mornings.

"Meow," Rubyeyes, my lovely cat, caterwauled, not interested in morning grumpiness and future re-murderings. Slouching over to the cupboard, I pulled out the milk, which was probably warm and going bad, and a bowl and gave the cat some of the lumpy, cottage cheese looking mess that splotched out. Looking at the whole unappetizing thing, Rubyeyes gave me a slow glare of reproach before digging in. That look promised a future in which he was sick all over the floor later to get back at me. Cat fed, sort of, I pulled a kettle out of that wonderful device called a cupboard and filled it with water before setting it on the little stove to boil for my morning tea. Except the stove wasn't lit. Giving voice to an incoherent sound that could only be described as, "Mmnff," I went off to get some kindling and find where I had tossed that flint.

In the end I skipped breakfast, drank my tea lukewarm and watery, tripped over Rubyeyes no less than five times, washed my face amid much splashing, got soap in my eye, managed to find a set of clean if immodest Cleyran clothing and proceeded to search for a cloak or some such thing to protect against the day's chill. All the same as every morning, though sometimes the milk was fresh, the clothes Alexandrian or Terran and the number of trips over Rubyeyes more or less than five; the tea though, was always lukewarm and watery. I hadn't had a truly good cup of tea since I lived in Burmecia.

"There better not be any disgusting surprises on the floor when I get back," I told my cat, whose only sign that he had heard me was to flick his tail in the self-absorbed language of felines, and I headed out the door. A long windy climb awaited me as I tenaciously walked up the steeply rising steps of Observatory Mountain. At least I could say I was perfectly healthy if I made it to the top without collapsing (and I'm told an old man used to make this climb with ease). Cresting the top, only slightly winded after two months of making the ridiculous climb daily, I spread my arms in the ferocious wind that tugged my hair this way and that, the orange pendant that stood at the top of the lookout slapping a sharp tempo against the rock of the mountain. I probably looked like a crazy scarecrow that someone hadn't gotten quite right, this tall, skinny, long-limbed girl with her fly-away-straw-hair, ridiculous yellow satin gloves, scanty body-hugging clothes and oversized leather boots, standing on top of a want-to-be mountain as if to scare all the crows away. I'm sure the birds were trembling all right, about right after they stopped laughing themselves into a coma.

The moment of girl-meeting-world-for-the-day ending though, I turned to the North and looked out to the distance. "No cargo ship yet…" I mumbled, looking for the airship that came to Dali once, sometimes on a lucky pass twice, a week. There was no dark speck on the horizon though. Leaping onto the wall, I wrapped my tail around the pole of the pendant, trying to see better. Still nothing met my sight. The ship probably wouldn't arrive till noon then. I supposed I could go into Dali and play cards with Eve to while away the time as I waited. She might even have some kupo nuts in stock; that would be nice. Well, to Dali it was then.

This is my life, day in and day out. It's a hodgepodge of little things stuck together with twine and lots of spit. I'd throw a prayer in there somewhere, but my faith is weaker than a goblin's knobby ankles. It's a relatively ridiculous life for an angel of death, but necessary. After all, not every person can have world shifting adventures that would make any sane person soil themselves, run home screaming to hide under the covers and wait for mommy to make the bad thing go away.

That cat there? I picked it up in Lindblum while living with the engineers who like to imitate Cid VIII (the famous engineer regent owned a cat). The yellow gloves I gained in Treno working at the auction (a noble left them behind). Those big boots are from Conde Petie, made for oversized dwarf feet. The shirt hails of the ddisplaced ancers of Cleyra, the skirt a thing I won at Daguerro. Each and every thing I own comes from somewhere far and roamed.

When I first left Black Mage Village two years ago, I hadn't thought of settling in Dali or any of the places I've been. My mind had been set to move to Alexandria, closer to Zidane, closer to that 'brother' who'd come to be my only 'family'. Alexandria had felt like a struggling beast, still trying to recover from the devastating effects of war and winning successes oh so slowly, only by the tenacity with which Garnet and Zidane urged the city on. I'd wanted to scream, watching walls go up slowly, slowly, and rubble disappear sluggishly. I did not stay in Alexandria long.

Next had come towering Lindblum with its high walls and encroaching buildings. Airships constantly flying overhead, engineers always talking, always searching for that next improvement; I'd found no rest there either, setting my head to engine problems and flight velocities.

Drizzling Burmecia, indulgent Treno, chipper Conde Petie, ghostly Madain Sari, muggy Qu Marsh, no matter where I went it wasn't right. Even now I don't know how much longer I'll be in placid Dali before I can't stand to be within its bound any longer. It doesn't help that I don't know or understand what drives me from place to place or what I'm looking for. My feet want to move though, there's a pain in my chest and I feel like I'm drowning, slowly, slowly, oh so excruciating slowly in this world I've never known and it doesn't make sense, but no one ever promised me logic, so I keep trying to make it all right and figure out this problem, solve this equation, set to rights the bizarre arithmetic. But it doesn't make sense and it's doubtful it ever will, so I keep moving and moving until I'm dizzy and the feeling that I'm drowning does not leave.

This is my life and someone save the bastard who messes it up. Again.

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**_There once was a little girl who liked to laugh and play. There once was a little girl who never spoke and genetically engineered her own friends. A little girl should be happy and free. They should play games and laugh and run and spill the tea set they put grape juice in on the good rug and get into mommy's perfume when no one's looking. This little girl played with numbers and spilled chemicals on the floor that no one cared about and if she smelled different it was only the biological substances she splashed on herself by mistake. All little girls love to be hugged and so did this little girl, but nobody ever hugged her. Her friends never said hello.

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_**

"Good morning Mikoto!"

I kicked a chest over and dropped down on to it, looking at Eve over the counter of the only store in Dali. "Hello," I drawled back, watching as she pulled out her cards and began to look through them. We had done this routine many times and we'd probably do it many more before I left. "Cargo ship coming late today?" Eve asked, setting down the Tetra Master board. The avid player that I was, I already had my own cards picked out and Eve was flipping the coin, not even having to ask what side I was calling. It landed heads: Eve went first.

"It'll probably be here by noon," I told her with lackluster, contemplating a moment over her opening play before choosing a card to put down.

"I've never seen someone so devoted to getting their mail, yet so completely unenthusiastic about it," Eve remarked innocently enough, though I didn't miss the small, wheedling, excited tone underneath. "Do you think you'll have another letter from that guy?"

"Probably." I played a cactuar and took her fang and lizard man.

"What do you think it'll say?" She threw down a bomb in my cactuar's open angle, the sneaky little—.

"Something about the village and sunlight and how they all miss me." The carrion worm in my hand took care of the double she'd just gotten.

Eve paused for a moment, studying the cards carefully. This was her second to last card. If she didn't watch it I'd win with another Perfect. "I feel bad for him. He writes you all the time and you don't even respond. You should say something nice, like that you miss him too or that you think of him or--" She timidly place down a goblin. I slapped down my Su, knowing I had her. There was no way she could beat that formation. No possible place to play that could turn the game back to her advantage. Maybe I could get another Perfect today...

"--or at least tell him that he's a nice guy," Eve finished, playing her last card with slight disgust. I beat it immediately. "You're too good for me Mikoto. When's that card tournament?"

"In a few weeks. I don't know if I'm going to go though. I like living my life of secluded hermitage, letters from creepy fawning boys or no letters," I informed her dryly, giving her back her cards (after a while of routine games we'd agreed that I just wouldn't take her cards anymore or she'd have none left). The 'boy' in question was actually a black mage from the hidden village of like name (though of course I couldn't tell Eve of the place so he was just, 'the boy'). He made my skin crawl. There was nothing wrong with him. Just the way he tried to talk to me...and give me things...and help me in whatever I happened to be doing...and was as sweet as sugar-spun pastries. Nothing wrong with him at all. I was under the entire assumption that it was me that something was wrong with--after all, Eve seemed to like him a lot, whereas I couldn't stand to hear him ask a question in his kind, caring voice. _"Do you think maybe I could help you with that Mikoto?"_ No, no I think not. Not unless you know the way to pull out a person's brains without killing them, letting them enjoy your saintly company in the sweet bliss of the lack of all intelligent thought of any sort.

Eve giggled and gave me a little shove at my words (she is truly the common girl who lives in the village in the middle of nowhere that isn't even on most maps). "You're not a hermit! You come and see me and Hal and Gumo all the time!" Gumo was the moogle who lived at the inn and suspected all milkmen of conspiracies and political intrigue. He was always watchful (or so he said) and he was always trying to catch the local milkman (who was only milkman by the default that he owned the only cow) in the act (what act none of us really knew).

"Don't try and disillusion me Eve. I'm determined to suffer this in dramatic silence and you're ruining the effect," I told my cheerful village friend as dryly as if I had just read a passage from a book entitled, "The World: A Genealogy", sitting down to play another round. Eve just laughed outright at that and gave me another playful shove. "I don't know _how_ you say those things with a straight face!"

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Once I ate a caterpillar and it slithered down my tongue, squirming down my throat and probably danced an evil jig in my stomach. I felt awful that day and I swore I'd never try any questionable foods Quina handed me again. I felt like that caterpillar had come back to unholy life and was dancing an encore and this time he had brought friends.

I'd gotten my letters alright and with them I'd gotten the news, the wonderful, glorious, gut wrenching news: I was officially an aunt. Garnet had been expecting for some months now, but I'd never really thought about the whole thing in relation to me. The cheerful letter Zidane had sent me set straight any possible thoughts of having absolutely nothing to do with this strange new child. _"Hello? Mikoto? You're an aunt now! Here's a list of all the things for you need: birthday presents, babysitting hours, list of compliments to effectively shower upon us the next time you see us, a big sticker so the kid can pick you out as one of the people its allowed to drool on and so forth and don't worry if she summons anything on you, it's just a phase. Oh and that black mage boy says he misses you. See you at the naming ceremony!"_

I never had been good with children. Either they cried and cried and cried, ran away and hid or did things they knew they shouldn't be doing and became angry at me when I wouldn't sympathize with the ow-ey they gained. Now I had a niece. Her name was Cornelia. She had a tail and a horn and oozed royal drool.

Sitting atop the lookout on Observatory Mountain with Zidane's letter in my hand, I felt like I was going to be sick and I believe I would have been, had not something happened. This something was an it, in actuality, and this it did not so much happen, as fall from the sky.

"Mission…retrieve…"

I looked up to see a –giant bird?—winged thing fly up above the mountain lookout, tattered and beaten, wings flapping sporadically, barely keeping itself up.

"Mission…retrieve…" It said again, bright yellow eyes glowing out from underneath its ripped hat. It looked sort of like a black mage, but not any type I had ever seen.

"…Retrieve…"

It raised a bent and warped staff streaked with dirt and badly scratched. The staff began to glow; it was going to cast some spell… And then it gave a shudder and its wings folded. The black mage thing dropped from the sky like a rock, faster than a rock, the black mage could have beaten the rock in a falling contest; enough about rocks. Random as this event was, it seemed determined to make me do something about it; point in fact, the black mage landed on me, nearly making me a Mikoto flapjack.

"Ow… Get off of me!" That's the nice thing about first person pronouns. Me, I, my, there's an obvious connection between you and said word. There are no words like that in the dead language of Terra. It's all we, us, our or if you _must_ single out an individual, you use their name, if they have one. No, Gaian is healthily supplied with words to express _your_ needs, _your_ wants. It's all about you, individualism, being separate from all the other creatures of the planet. I loved expressing my individualism, especially when it came to getting bizarre masses of winged black mages out of my personal space, especially bizarre masses of winged black mages that had just knocked me onto a rock floor and given me a splitting headache. By the way, there was a slap with that expression of individualism, but it didn't seem to be noticed. Indeed, there was no response.

So I decided to try again. "If you'd kindly remove yourself from _my person_, I'd be most appreciative." This one was accompanied by an encouraging kick.

"Uuuugh…" That was Mr. I-love-birds-way-too-much black mage, glowing eyes flickering slightly in the mass of darkness that was his face. "Mission…" he croaked, staring at the stone floor.

"Yes, yes, mission, I understand. First though: get off me! Secondly: who exactly are you so I know what authorities would be the proper ones to contact over this matter."

"Uuuuugh… Black….Waltz…No. 3….." He muttered hoarsely before passing back into the land of the blissfully unconscious, noticeably _without_ moving himself somewhere else. I wasn't so worried about that anymore though. I'd gone still, breath caught in my throat. I'd heard about the Black Waltzes… I'd been told of them and what I'd been told had not been good. What exactly had just fallen on top of me?


	2. God Gone Dead

Note: All characters, places, ect. belong to Square Enix.

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**_A doll does not move. It does not talk, it does not smile, it does not walk. A doll does not have a heart. It is not able to feel, hate, sympathize, love. It is not a person. This doll was a person._**

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_Chapter Two: God Gone Dead_

Once a long time ago in world that seems like another dimension now for all the things separating me from it, with a Mikoto who could be another person, I did a thing I always wondered afterwards the rightness of it. I think I defiled something then and because I defiled it, it changed and became a person. I think I killed my god.

On Terra, it seems so long ago and yesterday at once, not long after I'd been made the third angel of death, Garland took sick. At first he just seemed slower, older, less energetic, but gradually he began to forget things and to sleep instead of work. The periods of sleep grew longer and longer until one day he didn't get up, but lay in bed, looking as old as time and speaking to people who were not there. This frightened me; I called Kuja. He was older than me; he would surely know what to do.

Kuja came, he looked at Garland. He told me Garland was sick, that he was delirious. He told me he hoped the old man died. And then he left and I was alone with a dying man and I did not know what to do.

I didn't want to be alone. No, no, not alone.

Who would talk to me? Who would give me purpose? Who would show me that I was a living thing?

Would anybody remember I existed if Garland died?

I didn't know what to do, helpless in the face of this strange notion of ill health. How do you take care of a sick person? None of the genomes were ever sick. I was never sick. What did a sick person need?

I decided food. I gathered some of the small, flavorless nutrition wafers that were what we genomes ate and tried to feed them to Garland. I waited until he began to talk to someone I couldn't see, who was there only in his head, and then I shoved them in his mouth. He choked. He gagged. He did not eat them.

I told him he had to eat. I tried again. He did not eat.

Under my watch he slept, he raved, he coughed, but he did not eat. I cried.

"Eat please… Please eat… Don't leave me alone…" I begged him, but he did not swallow the smallest morsel. I went back to Kuja, I pleaded with him to help. _Please help. Save him. Don't leave me alone. Please Kuja. Please._

Kuja struck me and told me to leave things to their own course.

I did not ask again.

Three days passed in this way.

I cried and cajoled and begged and threw things at the wall and tried again and again to make Garland eat and he wouldn't look at me, didn't see me, talked to people I didn't know. The one person who cared about me more than they did about a random clod of dirt did not see me, not even in his hallucinations. I was simply not there.

On the fourth day he briefly returned to lucidity. I was huddled in the corner, half-asleep, tears drying on my freshly wet cheeks, when he came back for that sparse moment. He said only one thing. I heard it rasp out of the gray darkness of the room like a monster clawing for victims. "W-water…" And that was it. Water. Precious water. That was the only thing he had to say before he was once again talking to the dead people of Terra that I had never known.

I brought him water.

A leap to my feet and I was running out the door before I had managed to stand, grabbing a pot from the storage room, breaking a few others in the process, scrambling down to the still lake in the middle of the motionless town, the flat mirror of Bran Bal. Water. Master Garland wanted water.

I submerged the pot until it was practically drowning in the lake, my motions not even causing a ripple. Water, water, water. I'd exude the water from my pours for him if need be in the effort to keep him alive. _Don't leave me please don't leave me._

In the frantic race back to Garland I fell in, but I didn't care, not at all. I was up and running again within moments, Terra's still, dead water sticking to me like glue, refusing to drip even now that it was against gravity. Past the staring genomes, past the bland structures, through the door, down the stairs; I leaped onto the bed as if a dragon was after me and it believed I had just insulted its mother. Holding up the quivering make-do cup, I carefully poured it into Garland's open mouth. The water trickled slowly out, still loathe to move. It strolled down his ancient cheeks and soaked the white hair of his beard. _Live please. Are you alive?_

I put a hand on Garland's chest, but it didn't seem to be moving, there seemed no breath stirring within the ancient man. He didn't seem to inhale or exhale. His chest did not rise and fall. His face was deathly pale. He no longer ranted and raved or gestured mysteriously to the unseen. He did not seem to live.

Dying words, is that what his request had been? One thing longed for before the body broke down and no longer functioned?

I felt alone now and the tears came again. Alone, alone, alone. "No! Don't leave me!" I screamed, throwing myself upon my creator. _Don't leave me alone. Never ever. Please come back._

He didn't hear, or if he did, he didn't show such. I sobbed into his ancient chest with its dull red glow. I was scared, I was tired, I felt wretched. Time passed in this way.

Then slowly, my hand moved to the old man's face of its own accord and I moved until I was kneeling over it, just staring at it, that face I knew so well, as if it were etched in my brain and for all I could surmise it probably was. That face seemed as if it had existed forever and as if it would continue to exist until the end of everything. But I didn't think that was so because I was alone now, left to the insignificant company of myself, or so I believed.

I don't know why I did it then. I felt so sad, so desolate, as if someone had latched onto my heart and was crushing it between their hands. I didn't want him to leave me to this. So I bent down and timidly kissed him. First one wrinkled eyelid, then the other. His nose, his cheeks, his forehead. And then I was kissing his lips, the smell of death and decay and things older than a person could imagine in my senses and the taste of musty leather on my mouth. _Wake up. Wake up. Wake up Master Garland._

"What are you doing?"

I looked up, returning to a sitting position and slowly wiping the back of my hand across my mouth, not sure how to respond. What _was_ I doing?

Kuja stood in the doorway of the room, an unreadable look on his face. He stared at me. I stared at him. There was silence. What was there to say that could make sense in my moment of panic?

And then he sneered. "Do you like them old Mikoto? Are you his plaything? Is that why he made you? Does even the Great Garland have such primitive urges as the need to fuck?"

I stared down at Garland. Old man Garland. Master Garland. The last hope of Terra Garland. I looked back at Kuja. Gradually words came and I let them out as they came, slow and cold. "Get out." I threw the pot at him.

He caught it, but the words hung between us and in that silence something grew, a mutual hatred that would bite, snap and claw at both of us in the years to come. For then though, we contented ourselves with glares. I think he may have been incensed that I had the audacity to stand up to him, but even with Garland incapacitated he didn't dare do anything to me. I was under no illusions that he wouldn't have wrung me neck right then and there if he had thought he could get away with it. Gradually he broke off our hateful staring contest and left, throwing the pot to shatter on the floor. His contempt was obvious; I wasn't worth his time, effort or presence.

After a few more seconds of watching the door, waiting to see if he returned, slightly hoping he would just for the feeling of something else living, I looked back to Garland. His mouth had given up all pretense of being closed and hung ajar like a gaping void as if he'd been mummified. This allowed me to hear the soft gurgling of breath in his throat; so he was not dead then. I wiped the water trickling slowly from the edges of his mouth with a corner of the blanket. "Am I your plaything? Is that why I do not want you to die and Kuja does? Because I am a plaything and he is not?" I asked that wizened old face, Kuja's words striking new thoughts in my head. The only response was a slight cough as air caught in the back of Garland's throat.

Satisfied with this vague answer, I flopped down next to my creator and wrapped his arm around me, curling up next to him and letting myself also drift off to the empty world of sleep. Two living things in the room, one old and one young; out of the two of us, only I felt we were both people. One is a lonely number, but what do you do with two? _Indeed, what can two do?_

Garland recovered from his sickness, but he wasn't the same afterwards. Before he had been apathetic, thinking only of Terra's revival; afterwards he was at times fiery, at times cold, and he'd ask me things, things I didn't know the answer too. _Do you know where all our memories go Mikoto? Where do they fly off to? I don't know Master Garland, where do they fly off to?_ I wondered if it was because of me, had I done something wrong? Did I make him like that?

Thinking back on these things as I sit in my mountain home, kettle whistling on the stove, Black Waltz sleeping in the bed, cat purring on my lap, I reach this conclusion: trying to blame yourself for things is pointless. You gain more worth out of a lifetime spent trying to throw yourself up a wall instead of down it, so don't dwell on it and let the past be the foggy past you won't remember fifty years from now, sitting in the old folks home and talking of the 'old days' that are mostly fabrication. It's about damn well time I reached this conclusion too is all I have to say.


	3. Rope's End

Note: All characters, places, ect. belong to Square Enix.

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_**Children are given orders. Adults take charge. This child did not take orders and this adult would not take charge. There is no purpose and no people. This is called a thing. These things would not be defined.**__**

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Chapter Three: Rope's End

"Unnnh… Mission… Re—" The rest of it was drowned out as I administered a potion down the Black Waltz's throat, correctly judging where his mouth was hidden in the fuzzy dark cloud of his face. He'd been repeating the same two phrases for over an hour, ever since he'd woken up and it was driving me crazy. Crazier. Well it was really an opinion based on your perspective of sanity, but that's really not important. His two phrases themselves were annoying enough after one repetition that I had decided I'd drown the little winged rat instead of listening to them anymore. The phrases, for justification's sake, were: Mission retrieve princess alive: and: Eliminate all: both of these being said at slow, stuttering paces that made me want to say them for the Waltz so that they could be out and done with in less than a minute's time instead of agonizingly drawn out as they were.

A hand scrabbled at my arm and I judiciously took the potion away, setting it on the floor where Rubyeyes immediately began to sniff it to see if it was anything he might want to drink himself. The hand didn't calm down at this, but started to thrash around in time with the rest of the black waltz's body, as if he were having some sort of seizure. I highly doubted such though. I'd bought that potion with good money and it had definitely not been poison. I knew because I'd meant to buy poison and had found when I tested it on the dying grass outside that it was actually a potion instead. It had done wonders for my lawn. Lawn care aside, it seemed to be fixing up the waltz too. Parts of his wings that had been at odd angles began to straighten out and his fingers slowly uncurled, one by one, from their tensed, clawed state. I think it even realigned his back, getting rid of a small bit of scoliosis he'd developed, no doubt from sneaking and skulking and general frowned upon things of the same category.

"W-what—!" The waltz managed to gasp after he'd calmed down a bit and I patted him on the head like I would my cat, if my cat wore a hat and had nearly flattened me that afternoon by falling out of the sky on me. It was a pat my cat had never experienced and was never likely to.

"Glad you're up. Are you sane?" I asked the black waltz, who managed to choke out a word I do not care to repeat. I did take the time to inform him though that I was in no way a type of dog and dearly hoped I did not resemble one.

Rubyeyes, who had found the potion not to his liking, mewed at me. He wanted his dinner and he didn't care about rude black waltzes or the remnants of a plan concocted by a long dead civilization that would never come to fruition; no, for him, the world at the moment revolved around cuts of chicken and how many there would be.

Standing up, I went to the cupboard and began rummaging around for the meat, which, admittedly, was probably bad too. I'd managed to find several things I'd thought I'd lost before I even came to Dali –an ugly green towel that looked as if it'd drown someone rather than dry them, a promotional packet of fortune color stones someone in Tantalus had given me, a dagger I think belonged to Zidane (it certainly wasn't mine), that fish from three months ago I meant to give to Rubyeyes because I hate fish and which had now changed into something that barely resembled an aquatic creature, one lonely pink rain boot (pink because people had at first automatically assumed I liked the color because I wore it and not because my other clothes had just happened to be destroyed with my planet, darn the luck), and a…voodoo doll? Oh wait, that was probably that doll Bakku used to explain that one heist I participated in—all these things I found before the potion bottle crashed against my back and shattered. I gave a yelp and jumped onto the counter, nearly toppling over the kettle and just missing burning my foot on the stove. Was I bleeding? I couldn't tell –my head didn't turn that far. Putting a hand to my back though, I hissed slightly when my fingers pressed into a cut.

"Who…are you?" My patient of a black waltz, who was also the red handed culprit of the potion bottle's new found ability to fly, demanded in a raspy voice.

I gritted my teeth slightly and slowly clambered down to huddled in the chair I kept by the stove, waiting for the pain rippling like lightning through my back to recede before I did anything. Luckily there had been some potion left in that bottle; my back was already starting to heal.

The black waltz gave a raspy sound, something that seemed indicative it was still waiting for an answer. I wanted to inform him that you threw things _after_ you gained your answer, not before, and then only if the answer had been the wrong one (at least that's what Garland taught me), but instead I took a deep breath and said, "I'm Mikoto." After all, I hadn't killed the thing, so I might as well indulge it, though no more potions for Mr. Grumpy-Breeches-Can't-Be-Trusted-To-Act-My-Age.

For a while my answer seemed to allay him and he said nothing else so I set to picking up the shards of glass and dumping them in the lightweight crate I used for odds and ends. Maybe I'd need them later, I didn't know. Things happened and you sometimes needed the most strangest and commonplace of items. I liked to be prepared. Or at least that's what I told people. In reality I just couldn't be bothered to get rid of most things. Either they were there or they weren't.

"You're not a person you're a thing," the waltz said suddenly, watching me with his golden eyes like he would some bizarre new form of mashed potato, which obviously couldn't be very new or different, but certainly very strange.

"I'm a Genome. You probably don't know what that is, but that's what I am and no, I'm not a hallucination, if that's what you mean," I said, ready enough to agree, if in a roundabout way. Rubyeyes arched his body against my leg and I picked him up. He meowed at me and I could tell from his breath he'd eaten that three month old fish. I'd have to remember to keep him off my bed so he wasn't sick on it later, particularly when I was in it, or, I supposed, my new found companion.

"You're a thing," my advocate of unconditional world love black waltz patient persisted in a throaty grumble. "You're a Mikoto-thing," he amended after a moment, thinking the whole problem through. "An ugly Mikoto-thing." This seemed to satisfy him and he closed his eyes.

The focus on the inane topic was understandable; one did not drink down an entire potion in under ten seconds and expect to be lucid in anyway. The medicine did wonders for helping a person focus though, even if the focus was usually one track. Again, the behavior was understandable. I'd seen Zidane's friends fixed up with dozens of potions after they'd saved Gaia and they hadn't exactly been talking sense either. Garnet raved for hours about the appropriate colors for the apple tart someone unwisely offered her when she said she was hungry.

Based on this reasoning I decided to let the insult go. At least, until the next comment followed; I think right about then I started loosing the fight to be the better person.

"Very ugly, I'm having nightmares," Black Waltz No. 3 rasped as I took the kettle off the stove. I threw a quick glare at him. He was lying on _my_ bed, under _my_ covers (actually Freya's, but she never knew I took them), eyes presumably closed though with black mages, or waltzes for that matter, it's sometimes hard to tell, and to all appearances sound asleep. Except for that cackle he was performing to perfection.

"Glad I could be of service," I snapped, throwing an extra blanket on the rude thing, taking no care for his broken rib, and bringing my tea outside where I could drink it in relative peace. A gasped foul word followed this and I slammed the door shut so I didn't hear the others that came after. If there is one thing I can not abide out of the many things I can not abide, which are very numerous indeed, it is foul language.

For a while after that it was just me and quiet and tea which is a very good way to be. There was a spectacular dusting of pure, angelic stars in the blue velvet sky, breath-taking to behold in the clean, rural country side. The moon was particularly full and luminous, shining like a celestial candle and shedding silver rays on thankful Gaia. It was a romantic sky portrait anyone would have loved to behold. I sipped my tea and managed to ignore it all without too much effort, in fact, no effort. It was perfectly disgusting and that was another of my goals when I died: to complain loudly, angrily and violently to whomever came up with the Gaian night sky. It was appallingly vast and ever changing and staring up at it for long periods of time tended to give one a headache. Very disgruntling and a perfect way to ruin a fine night.

The sky aside though, what I really needed was some inclination of what I should do next. There was a black waltz in my house, I was running out of all the money I had earned in Treno, my food supply was practically nil do to some kind of vendetta bacteria and fungus seemed to have against me and I needed to get myself to Alexandria sometime within the next month to oo and aah over the new baby for Zidane.

At least I didn't have to worry about rent money in Dali like I had in Burmecia. That had been particularly awful; sometimes it had felt as if the landlady knew a spell to suck out all my cash when I wasn't looking, spare or not. I'd had to steal a pretty penny a couple of times just to come up with the bare minimum for a room, let alone meals. Not that I'd ever admit any of this to anyone. As far as Zidane knew I was fairly well-off and finding my place in the world. If he knew I'd grown accustomed to eating acorns and the more mildly poisonous berries at times simply because I couldn't bring myself to ask him for some spare change I think he might just suffer a bout of apoplexy before he could get out the words of just what, if anything, was going through my mind. Amarant would probably laugh his backside off at that.

I took another sip of tea and stared at the sky with disgust as it persisted to be perfectly cheerful in the face of all my problems, the stars twinkling ecstatically as if there was a ball going on and no cloud with the nerve to block out a single part of it in the face of all the chipper celestial lights. Thanks for the sympathy sky, thanks a lot; next time you need the moral support of an ominous setting, you see what I do for you. You can be sure it won't involve putting out some mood candles and soulfully wailing the somber theme of _I Want to Be Your Canary_.

"What am I going to do? Something else happen and direct my life for me already," I whined like the little girl I sometimes thought I was, scuffing a booted foot in the dirt and staring at the picture it made as if it might spell out the answer. It would have been nice if it had, but instead it looked oddly like the face of Gumo the moogle; there was his suspicious little eyes, the whiskers, more on one side than the other for some unknown reason, that rock could be that red thing on top of his head. Was this supposed to mean something? Go ask Gumo for advice on life and hope he doesn't rant at you about friendly and conspiring Jeff again? If that was the sign given to direct my life, then I was in a lot of trouble.

"Well, I suppose cheers to you, puzzling sign from my foot," I murmured sarcastically, slightly tipping my cup to the dirt portrait of Gumo in mockery of a toast before finishing off the rest of my tea. Standing up, I raised my arms towards the heavens and stretched, feeling the kinks leave my back. It was time to go to sleep if I meant to figure out anything about all these dilemmas tomorrow. For while simply dropping and dying somewhere convenient was a plausible idea, I was so used to the motions of living, it'd certainly be hard to promptly stop on cue. I supposed I could give it a rallying attempt later if nothing else came to mind.

"You know, why is it we all come in threes?" I quietly asked my sleeping black waltz patient upon entering the house once more. The only answer I gained was a snore. That made me smile somewhat. Even black waltzes are people.


	4. Harboring Demon Cure

Note: All characters, places, ect. belong to Square Enix.

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_**Nightmares are only dreams. Not premonitions nor messages from beyond, but misshapen plays put together for the entertainment of the subconscious. Science has proven these dreams of horror mean nothing. This means nothing.**_

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_Chapter Four: Harboring Demon Cure_

Sleep came fast and quiet like a thief, stealing me off to a world of dreams that would be unrecalled upon waking. Every once in while there is the dream that lingers though, as if to tell you something, let you in on the big secret that life is keeping from you, but always too sporadic to be understood, an undecipherable message. Sleeping on the floor of my small mountain home, lying in a worn and frayed sleeping bag, one came to me that night, a dream-like reality that puzzled and disturbed. It began like many unassuming dreams, seemingly harmless, unimportant, but it quickly cast aside its casual façade.

I dreamed of the still lake of Bran Bal. It was almost a memory, recalling of the time when I had sat on the edge of the dead water and stared at my plain reflections for hours, eyes searching the mirror-Mikoto even as she searched me, intent on that one thing that caused me to be different from the other genomes, some sign, some mark, that separated me from them as Kuja's pale skin and silver hair did. In the dream though, the more I search, the less I find that could possibly be the thing I search for.

"What are you looking for?" Zidane asks me in the dream, sitting down to also stare at the unremarkable reflection within the lake, yet it isn't Zidane whose reflection shimmers in the water like the real thing. "Do you know where all our memories go Mikoto?" The monster asks and his hot, smoky breath is on my cheek, stifling and acrid, burning away the flesh to reveal the thing inside, the thing that I've been searching for. "Where do they fly off to?" The grating voice whispers and my ears are bleeding with the sound of it in my head, buzzing, buzzing, masking everything in red. "Where have they gone?"

"The rain is coming," someone says and stars are falling all around, pounding the dead ground and raising the dead dust. Fire burns it all to ash and the monster is whispering, Zidane is whispering, the monster is whispering, whispering in my ear. _Where do all our memories go? Did they burn away with the funeral pyre? Do they hide under the bed; within the farthest folds of the wardrobe? Did you kill them? Murder them softly while you slept?_

The world's become a wasteland, rock everywhere, not even sand to blow forlornly in the wind; just the lake, the monster and me. _Do they writhe in agony as you forget them, one by one? Leave them in the darkness, broken and alone, no comforts left? Do they—_

I gaze into the stillborn lake, trying to see through the smoke of the monster's words, skin shriveling and dying, peeling, flaking, dropping away. The secret's coming out now; what is it—I have to see it, must know it, look up and down and all around it, devour it with my eyes until the secret dies forever, usurped by understanding. Zidane whispers though and his breath scorches me to my bones, his words like a hornet's nest within my head. _–Hanging from the tree, throats crushed, breathe gone, hearts stopped? Are they drowning in the ocean with—_

The smoke is rising and the lake is shining like crystal; mirror mirror of the stone, what's the truest of them all?_–Violated beyond repair, crushed and dismembered, gone from thought? Have they drunk the sleeping drought, waking to find themselves buried six feet under by those who thought them dead? Do they—_I'm leaning forward, eyes intent, everything focused in that sight—_eaten after being roasted by_—the air is clearing, the reflection emerging, the secret soon to be known—_run away and dying in a ditch with no_—Tell me, tell me, tell me please, I have to know, the answer needs to be revealed—_dropped from a tower to the ground the long way down_—colors, shapes, lines.

"Bastard child, seed of mongrels," the secret whispers and the dead gray dirt is peeping from my burning face, pouring out, emptying my ashing skin of everything within. The dirt keeps falling, a mudslide to bury me alive, the monster cackling, whispering, whispering--_Answer now. Where do all our memories go? Where do they fly off Mikoto? Tell me, tell me, now before you die. Where do they go?_—no thought of helping in his mind. The world is bursting into life and the soil is falling—or is it the soil that is bursting into life and the world that falls?—the sky is spinning and all I can think is the secret is earth and I'm going to be buried six feet under in myself, yet I can not fathom why this seems so bad. I am the soil as well as Genome; bastard child it calls me lovingly and Zidane continues to whisper his stinging words to me, hot, monstrous breath kissing my cheek and I am home in time to live the end as everything begins again. Thank you mother, thank you father, existence is alright, but please, can there be a purpose next time?

I woke to golden coins gleaming out of the darkness with indifferent curiosity that was half universal hatred. It took me a moment to register that they were the eyes of the Black Waltz, awake and staring as if he had night vision, though for all I knew he could. I might have said something then, initiated some conversation, tried to open up and salve the inner wounds of the twisted creature as I had to begun to do for his body, but Rubyeyes began to purr, calling me back to the soft blankness of sleep and I found my eyes closing instead, all conscious thought flitting away like fall leaves on the wind. Any dreams that followed left all memory upon waking.

* * *

The coming morning followed the normal routine up until a point. Rising, tripping, washing, dressing, tea, climbing the many stairs, looking for airships; from waking that morning though, an idea had formed in my mind and I intended to act on it. For this reason I had left the wooden washtub outside to collect the falling spring rain and it was for this reason that I now dragged it inside, careful not to spill the fidgety liquid on the wooden floor.

Rubyeyes, always suspect whenever he saw me set out the washtub a second time, turned and disappeared among the jumble of things around the counter, not wanting to be present, knowing what a second appearance of the washtub for the day meant. Setting out towel and soap once more, along with a sponge, I went to the bed to fulfill the evil task I had ahead of me and evil it certainly was for I knew this was going to be quite the chore. "Wake up little bird," I said loudly, dragging a sack of deadweight six foot black waltz out of the bed.

An inarticulate grunt was all I received as I lugged the deadly sleeping terror of personal hygiene to the tub. Laying him down beside it, I had to think for a moment about how I wanted to do this. Suppose I just drowned him? It would be the humane thing to do, right? Save him a lot of trouble and everyone else in the world. I wasn't even human though, so no, forget about being humane. Besides, that would have meant I'd wasted a perfectly good potion; I'd learned my lessons well in my time on Gaia and I knew full well that throwing away money like that was sacrilege, right next to killing the queen. I supposed I'd best just throw him in, but what about his clothes?

Well, I'd had to share a room with Kuja before. This couldn't be more horrifying, or so I thought. How little I knew of unwashed male. At least Kuja had been clean; he had not been his own toxic, small scale ecosystem.

I fetched some ratty old gloves I wouldn't mind burning later before I began to undress the Waltz, disgustedly, yet fastidiously piling the clothes on a towel where they would hopefully not spread the diseases they were certain to be carrying to my clean floor. The last thing I needed was to be sleeping on the floor when it had sickness all over it. Amazingly he was able to remain unconscious through all of it. It wasn't until I pulled him up and pushed him into the lukewarm water that he stopped snoring lightly and gave a loud, yet garbled shout, water rushing in his hidden mouth.

"Y-you!" The Black Waltz spluttered, coughing as I sat him up in the tub, for he was too weak to do much on his own aside from breathing and cognitive thought. "You complain louder than a cave imp," I informed him, stretching out his wings which I'd been careful to keep out of the water. Wetting the sponge and adding soap, I began to gently stroke the feathers, careful to not damage them as I washed out the horrifying amounts of dirt, oil and other things clinging to them.

"Stop," my victim protested, attempting to pull away, but not managing more than a slight jerk. I persisted on, unperturbed. "You're filthy. You need a good bathing and seeing as you can't do it yourself and are even less likely to do it yourself, I have to suffer through doing it for you. There are no scummy little birds around here," I replied, laying down one of the many rules he was going to have to learn that day, my hands never faltering in their careful attention, though I did look up to see him trying to glare at me over a particularly dirt-caked shoulder.

"Then I'll go somewhere else," He snarled faintly, energy already spent.

"Where will you go little bird? What will you do? Collapse outside my door?" I asked curiously, wondering what he really thought he was going to do. The war had ended long ago and there was no purpose for him in the world anymore. In fact, the world believed him to be dead. He did not exist according to Gaia's population.

"First I'll eliminate you and then I will finish my mission," was the angry reply.

I didn't say anything to this and there was relative silence aside from the vague meows Rubyeyes was crying somewhere (he must have gotten trapped in the cupboard again; I honestly couldn't see how he could get in there, yet not out). "What mission is that?" I asked after I'd partially finished cleaning one wing, deciding not to bring him up-to-date for now.

"None of your business seeing as I'm going to kill you," the Black Waltz answered with as much of a threatening tone as he could muster, which, sad to say, the lumpy milk I'd fed my cat yesterday had seemed more threatening than. I tugged his hat, which I'd left on him (I'd discovered in the past that black mages disliked it extremely when you touched their hats, so I had left the Black Waltz's on, figuring he was the same way), down over his eyes so that he couldn't see. "That's no way to talk to someone who's helping you, especially after you nearly made a hot cake of them yesterday."

A grumbled threat was my reply; I believe he'd started to fall back asleep, exhausted already after such small exertions. Soon enough he was snoring lightly again, ignorant to how clean he was becoming. He woke once or twice again and gave me some trouble, the worst being when he pulled my tail and I nearly fell in (if he had not been an invalid I would have smacked him, though as it was I intentionally splashed soap in his eyes which made him holler in a way a thug could only worship). Once he was good and scrubbed, not exactly smelling like Alexandrian perfume, but at least bearable, I found him a sheet to wear like a robe and turned to washing his clothes, dumping out the washtub and filling it for a third time.

Pausing as I moved to hang his coat in what small space I could find, I found myself looking at the Waltz with a feeling I'd seldom felt, but recognized all the same; it was empathy. Laying down the coat, I sat on the edge of the bed and hesitantly pulled him into my arms, wrapping them around him in an embrace that wished to do away with all the pain that was sure to come upon learning of all that had happened during his wanderings. I knew a hug, no matter how sincere and wishful of helping, couldn't solve problems, but I'd had an exact count of one in my life—that from a cheery Zidane upon his return which had been accompanied by a tousling of my hair that didn't help my blond bird's nest—that I knew a hug could still do many small things. Is a Black Waltz strong? I didn't know, but I hoped so, for having the world you knew disappear and leave you behind is not an easy thing to move on from.

Standing before I woke him and he said some very likely rude things, I picked up the coat again and resumed hanging it, a song Garnet had taught me on my lips, the first and only song I knew. "_Alone for a while I've been searching through the dark_…"


	5. Whisperings of Posterity

Note: All characters, places, ect belong to Square Enix, not me.

And thank you very much to Aqua Phoenix1 for beta-ing this! It helped very much! (I am just sorry it took me so long to put this up!)

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_**A secret is something special between two people. A secret is something you tell no one and never talk about in front of others. Secrets are not for sharing, are not for friends. Secrets are to be kept hidden, out of sight. Here is a secret.**_

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_Chapter 5: Whisperings of Posterity_

A secret is something special between two people. A secret is something you tell no one and never talk about in front of others. Secrets are not for sharing, are not for friends. Secrets are to be kept hidden, out of sight. Here is a secret.

"Nnh?"

It was early morning. Someone was knocking on the door persistently and all the things that should have been close to hand were gone, thrown at the Waltz during the night in an attempt to put an end to his mutterings and stares. With nothing left to grace the door with and scare off my visitor I cursed, pulling myself back to the conscious world; damn my organizational skills which left no messy floor untouched. I clambered to my feet, trailing my quilt like a cape (that is, if capes were tattered, pink and embroidered with Yans.) The thing was a gift from Garnet and I despised it, but my unwelcome invalid had refused to relinquish the better quilt I'd taken from an inn at Lindblum. Opening the door a crack, I saw Eve's smiling face. I wanted to throttle her, but lacked the energy. As soon as I had my tea I was going to…

"Oh Mikoto, it's so exciting! There's a boy in the village looking for you!" She says the word 'boy' as if it describes some strange, yet delightful, mystical creature. She says the word boy as she would say unicorn, with awe and enthrallment. When I say the word boy, I say it dry and slowly, like I'm being force-fed poison.

Eve grabbed my hand excitedly, pulling me out from the sanctuary proffered by the door separating us. "He's so handsome! You never said!" She babbled in her excitement (this is probably the most thrilling thing that will ever happen to someone she knows in her life time) and pulled off my quilt. Then she had to stop and gasp.

"Mikoto!" She said my name with such admonishment that I looked to see if there were traces of murders I'd unknowingly committed in my sleep on my clothes. No, there were no blood or brains or guts, just my gray (it used to be white with lace, but the mountain water always had a thing against the color during laundry sessions) breast band and my oversized, tattered and poorly darned bloomers. I realized the former was in danger of falling off my skinny, scarecrow hips and pulled it up higher, tightening and re-tying the ragged cord I used as a disgraceful excuse for a belt.

"What?" I asked, not seeing the problem. It was just my underwear. So maybe they weren't exactly beautiful pieces of clothing, but I doubted hers were any prettier. Eve seemed to be choking in mortification though. Finally she hissed at me, "Where are your clothes?"

I had to stop and think about that, my mind still thick with sleep. "Oh, they were wet, so I let them dry," I remembered after a moment. (Don't put a permanent wrinkle in your dainty little brow trying to remember now, Mikoto).

"_All_ your nightgowns were wet?" Eve demanded incredulously, putting her hands on her hips and looking down her nose at me as if I'd painted her goat purple. I'd told her that was Gumo; I'd showed her the paint bucket under his bed! What was she getting miffed about?

"Eve, I don't own any nightgowns," I told her and she covered her gaping mouth, smothering a second gasp. "Don't own any nightgowns?" she demanded, astonished, and I had to shake my head. The problem in this situation continued to elude me.

"Well, we'll just have to remedy that later," she told me, pulling herself together as I groaned (it was too early, withhold cognitive thought for a few more hours please). "Right now let's get you ready for that boy," she said and breezed past me into the house.

"Eve, don't…" I cried, wide awake now, but it was too late. She was already screaming. "…go in there," I finished with a sigh. Why did no one ever listen to me? I was only created with intelligence higher than most of the people on this planet combined, but no, obviously the monkey-tailed girl can't possibly know what she's talking about, now can she?

"Mi-Mikoto, there's a black mage in your bed!" Eve stammered, tugging on my sleeve even as she pointed, as if a combination of the two would magically supply answers.

"Shut up, Worm!" my benevolent patient snapped and I heard something crash. He better not have thrown my kettle or my fist would make sure he wouldn't be walking again anytime soon.

Eve squeaked and rushed back outside, firmly closing the door behind her and just in time as something smacked into it and clattered to the floor. It sounded like my oil lamp. I began to contemplate how many ways there were to hurt a person without actually killing them. Eve though had no such blithesome thoughts on her mind, but plopped down on the step, looking up at me with a dazed expression.

"I told you not to go in," I pointed out in my helpful, ever amiable way and she nodded dimly. Finally she asked me slowly, "So…was he good?"

I gasped and I know I must have looked like an irritated Mandrake. There was an evil, little smirk on her lips as I murmured strongly, "I did not sleep with him!" How could she ever suggest such a vile, foul, repulsive, degrading idea?

She laughed at my disgust and I wondered how far the quilt she held would go down her throat, but no, that would be a waste of a perfectly good, if abhorrently ugly, quilt. I settled for narrowing my eyes to a gaze icy enough to freeze bombs instead. It is a skill I have perfected these past two years.

"Calm down. I was just joking. We can get rid of the thing later. Right now just get dressed for that…boy..." I didn't have to see the look on her face to know someone had unknowingly come upon us.

"U-Um… You're…not…dressed Mikoto…" a very familiar voice stammered from behind me and chills clawed their way up my spin in swift, agonizing succession. It was him, the black mage who wouldn't stop writing me. In my head I was screaming in horror that he'd found me. Turning around, I merely looked down at the ground. It was so…covered with dirt. How intriguing.

"Um…yes…" I told him (my intellect shows itself so well when I talk like a simpleton). Eve quickly handed me the quilt as if I was supposed to do something brilliant with it. I just stared at it. A quilt. Even more interesting than dirt. Stunning.

"U-Um…you…might want to put that on Miss Mikoto… It's a bit chilly this morning…" the mage said finally in that sweet, innocent, stammering way that everyone, but me, finds so adorable. What the hell was the big problem? It was just my underwear! It's not as if I'd stripped to nothing and started dancing obscenely.

When I didn't move, he gave his hat a tug and wandered into the house saying, "L-Let me just get you some clothes, sh-shall I?" That's the second to last thing he said, the last being, "Oh," before a near petrified loaf of bread that was supposed to be this morning's breakfast hit him directly on the side of his head. He crumpled to the floor in the way only a sweet, saintly person can manage: in a graceful heap.

"You better not have killed him!" I called in a slightly annoyed voice as Eve rushed to his prone form, though inside I was feeling slightly light headed with this new turn of events. "I'm not cleaning up your messes!" I am an evil girl; there is no cure for my condition, sir.

I could hear the Waltz cackling and I knew he was enjoying this as much as I was, the twisted, ineffable fiend. I could wring his neck with an embrace. "Is he okay?" I asked Eve though for the sake of appearances.

"Y-Yeah, he's still breathing," she told me, flustered. Damn, I almost shouted at the Waltz for his sub par throwing skills, but managed to contain myself. Kneeling next to the black mage, I suddenly realized he looked different. He had a real face, a human face, and he was wearing a tunic instead of the usual black mage coat. Even his build was different, smaller, more similar to that of a Genome's than a mage's though he was missing the tail. He had the telltale hat though and how he had kept it sitting atop his (currently) blonde haired head when he fell was a mystery to me. Maybe he'd lined the rim with glue before putting it on one day.

"320," I called, giving him a nudge with my unshod foot. When he didn't respond, I gave him a helpful kick; Eve glared at me.

"What?" I asked innocently (I have never been innocent). "A good kick wakes me up."

Eve didn't say anything, but if looks could cause people to burst into horrible, blazing, skin peeling flames, I would have been making a hectic dash for the well right about then. "What did you call him? 320?" she asked finally, shaking the mage's shoulders. "What an odd name."

"He's the uh…320th boy named…Harrick in his family," I lied quickly (I'm so brilliant in the morning; I need my damn tea).

"320th?" Eve demanded, perplexed.

"He has a big family."

She gave me a suspicious look, correctly believing I was telling her black, sinful lies.

"Really big," I amended.

Before she could give a reply, I felt something pull at my tail and I gave, much to my shame (who knew I had pride), a screech that probably would have made the deaf deafer. A cackle behind me told me it was my favorite Waltz and before he could so much as draw in another breath, I grabbed my pillow and shoved it over his face, holding it down as he struggled for air. He flailed and I smirked slightly at the thought of the big bad Waltz being taken down by a pillow. Kuja certainly knew how to build them.

Then he found my arm and pulled even as he tried to roll away from the suffocating pillow. The two of us went down in a heap and for the second time in as many days I was on the floor with an angry Waltz pinning me down. Only this time, as I stared up at his clothes hanging around the room, he was naked. Well…at least he was clean.

"Mikoto!" That was Eve and…was she grinning? No, no, she was just concerned. She was in no way taking her own sweet time in helping me get the big lug of whatever Waltzes are made out of off me. And she was not winking at me suggestively. She was, wasn't she? Why did I get the feeling she was taking this entire situation completely the wrong way?

The Waltz said something rude as we put him back in my bed, covering him a little more securely than was probably necessary, but I honestly saw no reason for him to have a need of mobility at the moment. At his words—which made Eve blush a deep red like a tomato—I stuffed the pillow back in his face. Just being friendly.

"What do we do about…Harrick," Eve asked.

I gave her a confused, annoyed look. Who the hell was…

Oh.

"320, yes, we can just leave him there," I told her and she frowned at me in the way I'm sure my mother would have done many times if I'd had a mother and not been a creation. Needless to say, I didn't have the ingrained training to that look, so it didn't exactly make me cringe. "What?" I demanded instead. The floor was a perfectly acceptable place. I'd slept on it for the last two nights; it wasn't going to kill the black mage to be on it for the duration of his unconsciousness. He might even bless it free of whatever germs my tenaciously living patient left on it.

"Mikoto, he can't stay on the floor. Don't you have somewhere else to put him?" Eve accused and I looked around at the small, small, incredibly tiny, it-barely-fit-me-and-my-cat-and-felt-overcrowded-with-the-five-of-us — including Rubyeyes who was sitting on a pile of organized items, glaring at me for breakfast as if I starved him — Garnet's-closet-would-have-fit-us-all-better, one-roomed house of mine. "We can make a bed out of that chair and those two trunks," I said finally with a sigh. Apparently I had taken up running a free bed and breakfast sometime during the night.

Eve nodded and dragged the chair and trunks into line while I retrieved the repulsive extra blanket along with the two sole towels I owned and reclaimed my pillow from the Waltz. He didn't say anything, having already fallen asleep again, and I suppressed a small snicker. For a creature of death, he was not too capable in retaining consciousness for a span longer than five minutes. When we finished rearranging my few pieces of furniture, the mage was set up on a makeshift bed that cut the extra space in my house in half, something which I managed to keep back my sarcastic remarks about, barely.

"He looks almost like an angel," Eve said with a sigh, gazing at the mage fondly, and I made a soft, disgusted noise. What was so great about angels, about goodness? He was just a _boy_. I'd rather have something wrong and real than something good and surreal.

"Why do you dislike him so much, Mikoto?" Eve asked, following me as I went to Rubyeyes and picked his fuzzy, slightly dirty — I swear he rolls in mud when I'm not looking just to annoy me — body up to go find something to eat. I shook my head and went to the cupboard, stepping over the angelically detestable obstruction dominating my floor space in the process. What a silly question. That was Eve though. One romantic notion after the next.

"I mean it Mikoto, you have a real problem with this boy, and all he's ever done is be nice to you," she continued stubbornly. Rubyeyes mewed at me, digging claws into my shoulder slightly, both vying for my attention. For a moment I considered finding a way to join my other two visitors in unconscious bliss. The fact that I had not one, but _two_ other visitors aside from Eve was disturbing and wrong. At this rate, I'd have half of Dali on my doorstep along with Zidane and his (no doubt) drooling child.

"I do not have a problem with him," I drawled, rummaging around and pulling out the first slimy thing I found. It was…a dead mouse. From the moldy, green, speckled item in its mouth, I surmised it tried to eat something in my cupboard that had not aged well. I gave it to Rubyeyes who took it and jumped down to the floor, wandering outside to eat his prize. I just hoped it wouldn't make my cat sick; the last thing I needed was to have to scrub the floor again after all that washing yesterday. I have no hobbies, and cleaning is assuredly on the top of my list of many "not hobbies".

"Yes you do! If you didn't, you would have written him back and told him you didn't like him or visited him—talked to him _somehow_. You're not exactly shy, Mikoto." Eve put her hands on her hips and I have to admit that I was a little impressed that she seemed to know me so well. Not that I was going to tell her what she wanted to know. In no way was I going to admit that I was the creation of a dying world who ended up on this one by many miraculous events that had absolutely nothing to do with me personally. I would not tell her that I first lived in a village inhabited by black mages where I didn't talk to anyone, kept to myself and liked it that way, but that this one black mage, 320, kept trying to talk to me, to make me "open up". She would never know that everyone who was part of my "brother's" little "family" thought we made an adorable couple, so that every time I was around him I could almost tangibly feel them all encouraging him to get close to me until the next thing you knew we would be engaged and living a simple life in a dirt village where the most amazing thing about me was my more than one syllable vocabulary and the things I knew and could do and the fact that I wasn't supposed to be an individual and shouldn't even _be_ living peacefully in this world meant nothing, nothing at all.

Mostly I won't tell her this because she'd love it.

Why does my life have to be such a drama? I don't remember signing up for this tragedy-romance script and I'm damn sure I never consented to a leading male joining me.

"You're right Eve. I do have a problem. See…I can't decide," I said instead.

Eve stared at me. "Decide what?" she asked, curious.

"Between these two boys. Will you help me?" I asked dryly, gesturing to the sleeping Waltz and the unconscious mage. Eve's face lit up in understanding and I swear she looked like I'd just told her Winter Solstice was coming six months early. "Oh Mikoto, I'd love to! Okay, let's make a list of all the good things and bad things about them. First, Harrick. One: he's cute," she exclaimed, beginning to tick off items on her fingers.

I became a creature of the living dead as all my blood fled from my stricken face, and if it had been possible, out through my feet to soak up into the floorboards and die them a lovely, sanguine color. "Eve! Eve! I was just joking!" If I sounded slightly panicked, it was because I was panicking. While Eve had steadily been subjecting me to "girl talk" for the last two months, I was fairly sure that I was not ready for any part of the conversation she was beginning.

Eve giggled (yes, _giggled_) and then started laughing, at me. I didn't see what was so funny. "Your face!" she gasped finally. I stared sullenly at her. She only laughed harder. Fine, yes, I'm simply so funny, the way I take all her poor jokes so seriously. Hilarious, that is my one word definition.

I grabbed my sleeping bag, which was folded neatly in the corner and shook it out before pulling it down over her head. She squeaked, looking more like a giant, pink worm than a village girl.

(Yes, my sleeping bag was also pink due to the misinformed beliefs of my fashion preferences among my brother and his friends. Disgustingly pink)

"Mikoto! Get me out of this!" Eve demanded and I watched as she began to fumble around the room for me, banging into the stove and finally tripping over a pot she'd knocked down. "Oof!"

I sighed and began to set things out for tea. This was going to be a long, annoying and frustrating day. I wondered briefly about going out into the woods, lying down and playing dead until it was finally no longer pretend. It really seemed like too much effort.

At least, without tea.


End file.
